DEBATENATE

Topics / Everyday life

The challenge

“Follow your heart and live your truth”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

No. Your heart is a great engine and a terrible steering wheel. Jeremiah seventeen says the heart is deceitful above all things. That's not an insult. That's the user manual. And the research agrees with the prophet. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has shown that people are remarkably bad at predicting what will actually make them happy. You've tested this yourself. Your heart has wanted things at two in the morning that it regretted by breakfast. And my truth is not a thing. If your truth and my truth contradict, one of us is wrong, and reality doesn't check with either of us first. You'll say, so I should let other people run my life? No. Let the truth run it. Let me ask you this. Which version of your heart gets the vote, midnight or morning? Follow the truth, and bring your heart along for the ride.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. Feelings are bad forecasters of our own happiness, so following your heart regularly lands people somewhere they regret.

    Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert's research on affective forecasting, summarized in Stumbling on Happiness, shows people routinely mispredict how future choices will make them feel.

  2. Scripture warns that the heart deceives us. That's why we need a standard outside ourselves.

    Jeremiah seventeen nine calls the heart deceitful above all things, and Proverbs twenty-eight twenty-six warns that trusting in your own heart is foolish.

  3. My truth and your truth can't both be true when they contradict. Truth is what matches reality, and reality doesn't bend to feelings.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Living by other people's rules makes people miserable and fake. Being authentic to yourself is healthier than conforming.

Nate: Faking who you are is no way to live. But the cure for other people's bad rules isn't no rules. It's true ones. Be honest about what you feel, and be just as honest about what's real.

The lines

Sources

  1. The Bible, Jeremiah 17:9; Proverbs 28:26
  2. Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (2006)

More like this